Posts filed under 'MobileWidgets'
Sun officially launched today “JavaFX” (previously know as F3). It’s a scripting language that could be used to easily create rich content application for Java powered device.
This seems to be the Sun’s answer to Apollo and SilverLight, from Microsoft. Honestly, the answer is a little bit disapointing
- One more language! The language itself, is nothing really fancy. No major killing feature, not as dynamic as Ruby for instance, and not close enough to other “standards” like Javascript or Java. So why create another language, while there are so many?
- Integration, deployment: I take a look at the first sample and libraries. The library is something between 1 and 2 meg, on top of a standard JavaVM (JavaSE!). So, it’s huge. That’s one of the big weaknesses of Java today: the runtime is already so big, the installation so long, but worst, the starting time once everything has been installed.
- Target: mobile. Sun claims that it’s a good candidate for mobile application. Of course, it’s the next battlefield. But honestly, JavaFX is way too big to fit on existing mass market devices or any existing J2me implementation, so it needs to be embedded natively probably. I do not beleive that JavaFX mobile will be a serious candidate in the next 18 months, too early.
- Why not pushing further SVG? SVG is the current standard in vector graphics (and Flash is the de-facto standard). So why not push more SVG, by creating a better binding with SVG and Java, and/or Javascript?
So I do not believe that JavaFX will be big. It’s another missed opportunity from Sun to reinvent themselves. They had a widely deployed VM, that had the “network is the computer vision”, and now they desperately trying to follow on the RIA…Ajax is an intermediate technology, soit’s a fantastic opportunity to create something really new, Microsoft and Adobe are on the train, and Sun still trying to jump in…
Technorati Tags: javafx, javaone, ajax, silverlight, apollo
May 9th, 2007
Here are the first screenshots of the first result of the Mobease/Webwag acquisition: Webwag mobile, a full mobile widget engine….Beta just started on a small number of handsets, but more to come.
This engine haves mobile Ajax capacities, scripting, OTA update, and much more…..
I will soon write more about the technical details of the engines, as the API will be totally free and open, so developper can write real mobile and web widgets, that can be accessed from anywhere…
May 4th, 2007
Nokia just announced Seris 60 mobile Widgets. Obviously an hot topic for Nokia which is supporting also Widsets. Unfortunatly, there is no real demo available, just some animation right now, but the site claims:
“Widgets are lightweight Web applications developed using familiar,
standards-based Web technologies used to create Web pages: HTML, CSS,
JavaScript, and even advanced AJAX. They give S60 users a full Web
experience with instant access to the most essential Web 2.0 services
and Internet content. With widgets, people can personalize the content
and services that matter most to them.
“
No availibility date has been announced.
Technorati Tags: mobile, nokia, mobilewidgets, mobileajax, widsets
April 16th, 2007
Seems that mobile widget is a really fast moving area. Our first product (MobiFindIt!, a mobile search engine) has just been launched, and our second one, mobidget is not yet public (but you won’t have to wait too much) and we are already acquired! The happy owner of Mobease is Webwag, one of the actor of the start page space…
+ 
We were discussing, and even working together since some time, the WOD (Widget On Demand) being one of the first result of this great collaboration.
I’ll will take the role of WebWag CTO. It’s a really interesting space, as we are one of the few company with a strong experience both in mobile and in Web technologies, Ajax, Web2.0, etc… But there is an incredible amount of work to be done, both for improving the current platform and adding all our cool new innovations.
Widget are now increasingly popular, mobile widget are on the same trends too, the launch of the iPhone increased a lot the visibility on this space. Technically speaking, there are a lot of challenges, both on web and mobile (Ajax and his challengers like Flash, RDA, Mobile Ajax, etc….) that show that there are a lot of open possibilities.
But more than technology used to achieve this, widget and personnal page are in my view the best example of web and mobile integration, where user can access to the same data from various devices. The usage (of these devices) will be different, but they all provide an ubiquitous access to your personnal datas and area of interest.
As you guess, the integration of mobease technologies (Mobile Search, Mobile Widget) will provides a superior user experience when combined with the Web.
I will also speak as a Webwag representent at the next Benchmark conference on the Web2.0 this Tuesday in Paris.
Technorati Tags: web2.0, mobease, webwag, mobilewidgets, widgets, mobile ajax
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March 26th, 2007
uLocate just launched a couple of days ago “Where.com“. Exciting concept – great domain name- , mixing two of the fast growing area of interests in mobile phone: LBS/GPS application, and Widgets.
Widgets seems to be mainly “HTML based”, but looks good. The bad thing for now, it’s running only on Sprint.
Anyway, I liked the concept and I believe that “Location aware Widget” will be a killing category in future mobile widget space.
Technorati Tags: mobile widgets, where, mobilewidgets, lbs, maps, mobile maps
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March 15th, 2007
Another interesting demo from Demo07 was the BlingSoftware presentation. Bling software is another new entrant into the mobile widget space. They are only on brew for now, and the position themselves as provider of the “First Ajax Client for Mobile Handset” (which is wrong by the way). But I am a little bit doubtful about such positioning. Ajax (or any other technology) is just an enabler. The Demo07 presentation was mainly showing that by changing an URL in a text file, packaging it into a software and downloading it into a Brew phone, you then have access to this picture (or video) from the phone.
Read like this, does not seems a big deal. The fact is that what happens in the background was much more complex than this (a JavaScript interpreter running on a phone as a brew app for instance) but they scenario of the demo did not captured this in my view. Doing demos is an hard job, but I am not sure that others would have done better….
Technorati Tags: blingsowtawre, demo07, mobilewidgets, widgets
February 4th, 2007
You’ve noticed that the update frequency of the blog have slowdown by the past two weeks. I am literally overloaded with many things, and too few times to catch up with the blog for now.
But there are some interesting news:
The first one, is that I am leaving In-Fusio/Mobilescope. The In-Fusio times were great for me and we have created some extraordinary things, but after many years as CTO of In-Fusio, then MobileScope it’s time for me to move on and explore new areas….
if you follow this blog, you probably now my two hot topics: Mobile Widgets, and Geolocalisation.
I will move to Mobease with a CTO role. It’s quite certain that 2007 will be good for mobile widgets, so it will be a perfect year for the Mobease product launch: mobidgets . We did not communicate a lot, but there are great things hapenning behind the scene.
For the Geolocalisation topic, there are some on-going movements around J2memap that will be disclosed in the near future.
I will be also at the 3Gsm, in Barcelona, so let’s meet there if you think that we have some common topics! (and even if not!)
I also have a few post about some interesting project that we were working on at MobileScope that I’ll publish before the end of the week.
Technorati Tags: mobease, mobidgets
January 31st, 2007
Honestly, I was doubtfull about the capacity of Apple to really re-invent the phone, and I must admit I was wrong. If the iPhone really fulfill his promise, it will be a killer phone…. Much better than all the iPods, a sooo good looking UI, and some incredibly good features! Really hard not to be excited by this one. Thousands miles aways of a boring Windows Mobile, or a bad looking Symbian phone…Just one word: congratulation!
The widget part seems to be quite good too…
Definitively pushing the barrier to the next level…. My first Mac might be a phone!
Much more pictures and informations at Engadget….
Technorati Tags: iPhone, apple, mobilewidgets
January 9th, 2007
May be you’ve heard the buzz about the Apollo project from Adobe. Basically, it’s a desktop framework that allows the execution of applications in a machine independant mode, and provide access to local ressources of the computer (mainly filesystem). The objective is to be able to use Web applications in a non connected mode (local) for various reseaons (speed, availability of network, etc…). This is also called RDA (Rich Desktop Application )
The first remark, is that it sounds very similar to the initial objective of Java, 10 years ago! A machine independant VM, internet oriented, etc… especially with automatic upgrade features that are now parts of JavaWebStart. I am always surprised by the way industry always “re-create” the same things again and again. The good thing is that each iteration is better than previous one, but now, after the “everything is on the browser”, we are back to “local applications”. Sun had the lead some years ago, but was totally unable to drive and support the market.
About the framework, himself, there is not yet so many information, but I am afraid that it’s just a good repackaging of a local Flash player with PDF and an HTML component…Nothing really exciting, but Adobe is very good at creating the right buzz and as always, got great designers that create apps with the right waoow effect. The positive side is that Ajax/HTML are not really good technologies to build rich UI, they are just hacks, so it’s time to have something better. Not sure that Adobe will bring something better, but the fact is that there are not so many alternatives yet. Microsft is polishing is WPF framework (ok, not polishing but starting) so Adobe may have a timing advantage here.
But I have a few remarks:
- This is not standard. By developping an Apollo application, you rely on Adobe as the only provider of a technology. You can not provide your own Apollo implementation for specific devices, like mobile phones for instance. It’s a step back from the internet open standards.
- Full offline capacities won’t be for Ajax/HTML: I am quite sure that the offline capacities will only be available for Flash/Flex application. In other word, an existing Ajax/HTML based application won’t be able to run offline , or just as the equivalent of a “save as” mode, unless it will be rewritten. So do not expect to “port” your existing application now. It’s the best way to push you to adopt Flash/Flex.
- Is JavaScript/ActionScript the right language? JavaScript is a nice language, but is it adapted to develop full applications? Remember that in a RIA, most of the application logic will reside locally while now you can have part of this logic – especially the complex one – on the server side. So suddenly you will haves thousands if not more lines of code in pure JavaScript. Was already hard to manage on the internet, might be harder with RIA? ActionScript, which is ECMA based, seems more mature than pure JavaScript, but also incompatible….
My last remark (and linked to the first one) is that on mobile for once are not to far away. The availability of Ajax enabled browsers was limited (read non existant), so all rich applications are made using this kind of concept through J2ME, FlashLite, native, etc…and framework (like Mobease Widget one) are built on top of these technologies.
As I’ve previously explained, mobile is most of the time more about synchronisation than browsing (for mails, address, news, etc…) and such locally running app with connected capacities are the best answers.
That’s why Apollo go into the right direction even if there is still a lot of weaknesses in the approach, so let’s see how others react – Microsoft is doing WPF . Is there any attempt from the opensource community to propose something like this? OpenLaszlo? FireFox with XUL?
Note: during the preparation of this note, I’ve discovered “SideWinder“, which seems to be a project that attempt to build a framework for connected/non connected internet application. Seems highly interesting, but also not very mature as I was not able to run a single demo…
Technorati Tags: apollo, ajax, adobe, mobile ajax
December 30th, 2006
More physical widgets to come: just discovered this Korean company, emtrace, that is preparing a “WidgetStation“. Not a lot of information on the widgets (all the usual ones seems to be there) and how to create them, but I really like the idea. The bad thing is that design could really be improved, look like an old fashioned meteo station…. Targetting US market for “first half of next year”…So wait and see.
Technorati Tags: physicalwidgets
November 29th, 2006
Digital Identity will be without any doubt one of the big challenge in the coming months. Why? Because of two important trends:
- The explosion of services targeting segmented needs: from generic ones (email, calendar, feeds) to community oriented (MySpace, pictures, etc…)
- The “mashup/widget” trends, who gives the capacity for end user to aggregate these services to create their own unique application
Each of these service require usually an identity (most of the time a username/ password)
As an illustration, this excellent picture summarize the complexity of the various indentities that you use
So what happens practically?
Today, you have to create a new login password for each new service you subscribe. The subscription is painful, you enter again your coordinates, if you are lucky you can choose your username/password, if unlucky you are given a password if not an username. So one more to rememer….
The Digital Identity try to solve this by bringing a different mechanism: instead of having to register each time to a new site, the site get a part from your numeric ID and you just have one click to authorize it. Does not mean that they all sites haves the same right , you could provide them different level of access to your personal information if needed.
Seems quite complex, but when well implemented, could be a really good user experience. You can “feel” the concept with sites like Flickr, where third parties can access to your data without having to ask you your username/paswwrod. You can even easily revoke them at any time.
What is the impact on mobile?
Identity management on the web is painful, but it’s a nightmare on mobile. With more “Mobile2.0″ capacities (i.e. more data services) users will want to access to their web data on mobile. The bad news, is that not only you will have to retype all these username password, but with a keyboard not designed for this…
The solution
A decentralized Digital Identity approach could easily solve all this problem. By having the ability to easily provide your digital ID to applications (and in an ideal world , linked to your SimCard) these one can discuss with an ID server to ask for informations, and you are just one click to authorize them (which is a small effort even on mobile).
Does this will happens?
On the short term, it won’t be pushed by operators, as they are the only one that can easily knows user identity, and that’s a unique advantage from their point of view. But by opening this, and give easy access to third parties it could boost service usages.
There was various attempt from Operators, Third Parties (Sun’s Liberty Alliance for instance) to solve this issue, but none was really succsefull yet in terms of useability, most of today practical solution are still username/password based.
Conclusion
Mobile requires even more than the Web a standard Digital ID approach due to both technical constraint of the mobile and the increase of data services available. The mobile already have the technical basis to do this (SimCard for instance) but no real solution has been yet put in place. So we can only wait more to see if existing Digital Signature solutions from the Web will move to mobile….
Technorati Tags: mobile identity, digitalid, openid, digital, mobile
November 15th, 2006
I had some time this week to go through the excellent Ajit Jaokar an
d Tony fish book about Mobile Web2.0. Even if I must admit that I sometime disagree with Ajit on “MobileWeb2.0″ vs “Mobile2.0″ (which is not only a mobile web browsing experience), there are many interesting aspect in the book.
The main trends that will drive Mobile in the future are clearly explained, as well as some topic that I follow closely like MobileWidgets and Location Based Service. I especially like the chapter about factors affecting Mobile 2.0….So it’s the first book (and probably not the last) book on this very hot topic, which is already a reference.
Technorati Tags: mobile web 2.0, mobile2.0
November 14th, 2006
Some monthes ago I had a post about the chumby and the Physical widgets…
Here is a few more toys coming:
- This Ambiant Clock is linked to your Google calendar….
- This WiFi Connected Photo Frame a little bit expensive (especially compared to what the Chumby can do)
- And I should not forgot one of the first device in this area: the Nabaztag Rabbit who had a good press coverage this year at DEMO
Discovered through MobiTrend
Technorati Tags: widgets, physical widgets
October 25th, 2006
One more comment about the importance of widgets in mobile development:
A Plea for Mobile Developer Simplification
While this only solves a part of the problem it immediately increases the size of the telephony application developer base (which I think is a good thing for everyone.) If a web developer can start creating mobile apps imagine the opportunities for cool new services, especially if hardware dependent telephony and GEO APIs are easily exposed?
The answer is of course under development at Mobease, with the upcoming “Mobidgets“, the revolution in mobile widgets….
Technorati Tags: mobile widgets, mobile, widgets, mobidgets, j2me, mobease
October 24th, 2006
The topic of Widgets standardisation will become a hot topic next year. We already haves so many different Widget framework based on browser (Google, Opera, NetVibes, WebWag), a few desktop based Frameworks (Yahoo!Widget and Dashboard), and now some emerging mobile widget framework (Widsets, and of course Mobidgets! 
) that it’s quite sure that we can not continue into the same direction.
In this post, I will try to provide a view on the landscape of widgets in terms of interoperability (between platform) and try to explore the common part between theses framework.
First, I’ve been to “Widgipedia“, and from their FAQ, they already support these 14 platforms: (this was more than I was expecting)
- Yahoo! Widgets (Windows)
- Yahoo! Widgets (Mac)
- Dashboard (Mac)
- Standalone Widgets (Windows);
- Standalone Widgets (Mac)
- Microsoft Vista Sidebar (Windows)
- Opera (Windows)
- Opera (Mac)
- Opera (Linux)
- DesktopX (Windows)
- Kapsules (Windows)
- Samurize (Windows)
- KlipFolio (Windows)
- AveDesk (Windows)
I assume that some of them are interoperable, especially between the mac/windows version, but it seems that it’s not always the case.
Also there are some missing components, like Netvibes, or WebWag which have their own framework, and probably Windows!Live? Flash is also a probable candidate for a Widget environment….
Mobile applications have also their own frameworks, for instance Widsets or Mobidgets
So what levels of interoperability do they have. For now, none of them are interoperables!. When you do a Google widget, than you have to recreate it for Yahoo!Widget for instance.
The positive view is to say it’s not so hard to convert a widget from one environment to the other….
Is there any hope that this will change in the near future. I am not an expert of each of these widgets framework, but we can identify two major things:
the “representation/descriptive part ” generally XML based
the scripting language used is JavaScript/ECMAScript…
That’s a good start, but then you face all the little details: where are stored the user preference, how to access to some utility function, is it CSS/HTML based, etc….
So what’s next? Three options:
- One of these framework become the de-facto standard, and all the others are either killed, or align to it….
- A standardisation body (W3C?) take the lead on it and try to solve the problem….
- Status quo, only a few widgets engines/framework are still alive and tools are created to “transcode” one widget into another?
None of this solution is perfect, but it will be interesting to see how this will evolve in the coming monthes, especially in regard of mobile who will bring new widgets framework, but who will be hardly compatible directly with other framework for many technical reasons….
I am sure that it will be an interesting topic to discuss in the upcoming “Widgets Live!” conference in SF! (which is the same day than this interesting mobile2.0 event, in SF too!)
And in the second part of this post, I will explore potential solution and direction for a common widget framework…Stay tuned.
Update: one the reader (Lindsey), pointed out this work on W3C about packaging deployment Web Application Packaging Format Requirement. This doc is a starting point, but contains a good table about various packaging format used between Google, Yahoo and others…
Read also this post from C.Enrique some monthes ago on the same topic….
Picture taken from the “hyalo-weather” widget….
Technorati Tags: widgets, mobilewidgets, standardisation
October 16th, 2006
Sun/Laszo announced this week that they will work jointly on a new project called “Orbit”:
“Orbit” is an exciting collaborative effort between Sun Microsystems and Laszlo Systems enabling OpenLaszlo applications to run on devices supporting the Java™ Platform, Micro Edition (Java ME) application platform. This project will be delivered as part of the OpenLaszlo “Legals” multi-runtime effort, with first demos available before the end of 2006.
Laszlo sounds nice, it’s a framework based on XML/JavaScript that allows you to create and deploy Web application on different technologies: mainly Flash but soon DHTML (and now J2me?).
The promise seems a little bit big, so I excpect that exported application will have some limitation, but it is a nice idea to follow. Could this effort help to solve the “Widget fragmentation” issue?
October 13th, 2006
Two pictures of some really interesting concept phones. Both share the same concept of a touchscreen that fill all the phone area, so the screen can adapt to the context. That probably one of the best direction to go in…
The BenQ Black Box concept was disclosed a few weeks ago:
Looks good no? And the Nokia looks even better:
These kind of phone will be a perfect candidate for a Mobile Widget type of UI! Allowing direct access o the most important information on hte main screen, while being able to switch directly to the most relevant “layout”.
Through Engadget
Technorati Tags: nokia, benq, touchscreen, mobile, concept
October 9th, 2006
Well, again, widget is the next buzzword… Even Om Malik seems to be higly interested by this topic, in this article for Business2.0. The interesting part is that he seems to jump also into the Widget business with his own startup….
Through C.Enrique mobility Weblog…
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September 11th, 2006
UI One is the qualcomm solution to replace hoem screen user interface of handsets. O2 just launched what seems to be the first UI One enabled product in Europe.
As you can see, result in terms of quality seems to be quite good:
Example of Operator branding (from Qualcomm Web Site)
Example of Indivudal user Personalization (from Qualcomm Web site)
Note: these snapshot are example of UI One user interface, but does not display specific O2 customisation.
The interesting question, is who can change configuration, and what part of the configuration. Does this mean that end user can totally change is own home screen beyon Wallpaper, or is just up to the operator to do it? Can we completely remove operator UI customisation (that is from time to time not as good as expected…)….
Anyway, read the new from the MEX blog: Qualcomm gains traction with O2 uiOne handset
Technorati Tags: wireless, Qualcomm, UIOne, MMI
September 5th, 2006
I wanted to write this post since some time, but the launch of the Chumby give me a good opportunity to post it. What it Chumby? Basically it’s a small lcd screen that can run your prefereed widget, and that can be connected through WiFi to the internet. Than, you can put some kind of “Widgets” to this device, like clock, flickr viewer, stock quotes, etc…
Unfortunately (or hopefully?) these Widget are non interactive…
So this obviously one of the latest “physical widget”. With the adoption of Wifi, and the cut down of hardware price, I expect to see more and more small hardware application that do a single task , but do it well…This one still have a lot of different usage, but I think that in the future we will see hardware widgets, from toys, weather station connected to the internet, msn status, etc…
The other interesting side effect, is that the value is less and less in the software, but both in the service (we all knew this) but also in the hardware. What will make the interest of such physical widget: it’s the design, the fact it looks cool, trendy, etc…So after years where value was mostly in software, and hardware was just a commodity, hardware, and especially “internet connected hardware” will get his revenge, software being just a commodity…
Through TechCrunch
Technorati Tags: chumby, widgets, mobilewidgets
August 28th, 2006
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